One Less Face in the Crowd
by WeAllLoveHiccup
Summary: You know where this is going- he was sat on a bench and I went up and asked "could I sit here?" The rest is history; we remained not-quite friends until he moved away. Not what you were expecting? Oops... Modern AU. A study on young adult loneliness. (Not as boring as it sounds)


**Don't ask me where this came from because I have no idea either. Er.. good luck?**

I'm not a writer.

My shopping lists are abstract art, my essays for school were bullet point lists with better grammar and don't even get me started on the travesty that is my CV. However, I think this is important; I want to write about Hiccup.

You know where this is going, don't you. A twenty something girl writing about a twenty something boy. And when I tell you that I met him on a park bench after work and asked if I could sit there, well, I can already hear the sighs. I'm afraid, it just isn't like that. If you think this is going to be monumental, or beautiful, or life-changing, or something that makes you want to quit everything and live wild in the forest, you're going to be disappointed. But as far as it depends upon me, it won't be boring. (I hope)

I was walking home from work, as usual, listening to some generic pop song (you know the ones that you don't even notice have finished playing until you zone back in after five minutes of staring determinedly into space or, worse, at some stranger) that my friend Ruffnut downloaded in a frenzy of horror at the fact I had nothing but the one start-up song they give you on my phone.

I wasn't in a rush.

Sometimes I really wanted to get home, either to get warm or just to be comfortable, but others I wandered around aimlessly, and it hit me that I had no real reason to go home, anymore. There was no one waiting for me, after all. No pets to feed, or people to greet. If I got lost somewhere or disappeared, nobody would notice until my Wednesday chat with my parents, or the token Sunday dinner (cliche, I know) whichever came first. Ruff may have gotten worried after a while - as would my boss - but since we didn't always phone in to announce illness (and that one girl Lydia left for a few years) they wouldn't worry too much, and would forget sooner or later. So yeah, I was having one of those moody days where I wandered around contemplating how nobody cared about me. Great life I lead.

It wasn't a bad day, it was mostly dry (though the ground was wet, a given for English autumn) and it was cloudy yet the clouds were light and I wasn't bothered - rugged up with one of those huge tartan scarves that aren't really 'fashionable' at all - by the cold. I nearly passed the guy again, the guy about my age with brownish hair that always sat on the bench reading one of those books with ridiculously small print and a large lack of pictures. The only thing that caught my eye in the first place was a plastic, green smiley face sticker on the back of his navy beanie; he didn't strike me as a kid person.

I had nothing better to do (which is basically the gist of this story) and so I walked up to him and cleared my throat. He glanced up at me with an eyebrow raised and so I called on my social skills that mostly consisted of movie references and my moderate popularity in high school (trust me, it shows) and went with "Hi, can I sit here?" Step one- unnecessary interaction. He nodded with only a mildly weirded out look so I sat down and looked at my phone while he read. This went on until I got a text from Ruffnut:

**Ruffnut**: Drinks tonight? Tony is coming.

**Astrid**: Hell yea.

It became a routine after that. I sat there, mainly just for the fact that another human half acknowledged my existence (although I must express that the lady in Tesco remembered me, and the one at Costa didn't have to ask for my order, twice!) until one day I was faced with a (rude) personal attack.

I could feel he had been staring at me for the past five minutes, and I was just about to ask him what was going on when he barked a humourless laugh and finally spoke up.

"This is pitiful, isn't it. You've probably just got out of work, too and I bet you go to the same three places for food and your only friends are your work colleagues and.. guh. I'm rambling. But am I wrong? Please don't tell me you do some club like netball or rowing or skiiing because it ruins my hypothesis."

I snorted, twice. "Nope, none of those. (I didn't do sports, really. Other than the annual 'it's January join me at the gym' and the occasional 'wow that article was inspirational and I want a sports bra, let's go jogging!') What was your hypothesis anyways?"

He used his finger as a makeshift book mark and promptly started waving it around. "Well, this is the 'prime of our lives' or some bullshit. But I'll bet you anything that most of us see the same people, eat the same things, walk to the same five places and maybe rent a room or an apartment."

"Nah."

"Nah?"

"Some of us have cars."

He snorted this time, shaking his head slowly as he chuckled. "Hiccup."

"Sorry?"

"That's my name," he said through another laugh.

"Oh, right. Astrid."

That was the last interaction we had that was much different than the others. He asked me about work, and so did I. He told me that he worked in an office, (to this day I don't know what doing) with a guy named Fishlegs who seemed a walking disaster area with the memory of a bottomless bucket, and I told him about being a dental nurse with Ruffnut, whose eccentricity bordered on concerning.

I don't know if it can really be called friendship, considering we never saw each other elsewhere (despite one ill-fated, late night Tesco eye contact that was never mentioned again) though I must admit I was a little (Ok, substantially) affected when he suddenly stopped appearing.

For the few months that I sat on the bench alone, I desperately wished that if paid more attention and knew where he worked, or at least in what field! I suppose the whole point of this story is that I don't know where he went. It was a pretty sad day when I realised, sitting on the bench with my black umbrella up getting cold, that there was now even less reason to be there than there was in my apartment - at least it was warm and dry there - and so I started walking past it again, just as I did before.

I've never seen him again, and it's been bothering me, always there in the back of my brain that he just vanished. Of course, my imagination went through all the usuals (death, kidnapping, crazy ex, alien abduction) before settling for something more logical (lost job, parent needed care, felt like moving, lost house) yet it still left me rather hollow, the fact that he neglected to mention he was leaving. He was right about all of us.

When people think of loneliness, they think of old widows or just older people who never found someone, alone in a dusty house for Christmas. They don't think of teens with no friends or parents to care, or young adults freshly moved out or slightly older people who've lost touch with almost everyone. Creatures of habit, that much is true. Most people over the age of much younger than it should be just draw a comfort zone around them and stay firmly in the middle. It gets hard to meet people when 'you're in my class I'm following you' is no longer an option and a conversation topic. Of course, there's always websites, cooking classes and miracles, but that's not all it's cracked up to be.

So, I wish I could tell you that, following this revelation that no one does anything exciting in their lives, I went to the Bahamas, took up skydiving and got an eyeball tattoo, which I didn't, but I did get an upgrade from 'dental nurse' to 'dentist'. With the pay rise, I buy a better pizza on Thursday nights and I got the light in the bathroom fixed. I hope Hiccup's happy, wherever he is. I hope there's somewhere for him to read, a slightly crazy colleague and a local pub that's half decent. I hope to god that the closest supermarket isn't Aldi or Iceland, and it better not be Waitrose (I'd die of jealousy) and I'm neutral on Sainsbury's.

Sad to say, sometimes I still sit on the bench (alone, like the saddo I am) and ponder on how in the end - when the people who miss us, mourn us and feel hollow without us move on and fill that void - we are all nothing more than one less face in the crowd.

**Any strong views on supermarkets? No? Review anyway ;)**


End file.
